The Soul-Harvesting Puppeteer - Chapter 15
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 15
The Rainbow-Colored Hand that erupted from Han Eol’s Mindscape plunged instantly into a lower dimension, seizing the spike-bristled soul of the Demon Beast in an iron grip.
Because of the spikes, Han Eol’s Rainbow-Colored Hand could not grasp the creature’s soul smoothly.
He managed to catch hold of it, but since the soul was tethered to the tail, it wouldn’t pull free.
“!!!”
The moment its soul was seized by the Rainbow-Colored Hand, the Demon Beast’s three eyes flew open wide.
All six eyeballs trembled violently, as though struck by a sudden shock.
Even in its panic-stricken frenzy, the Demon Beast trained all eight tails upon Han Eol—thick barbs loaded within the hollow tips of those tails gleamed with a sinister radiance.
A high-pitched whistle tore through the air.
Above the Demon Beast’s head, ink-black clouds churned in a spiraling vortex.
Beneath the clouds, crackling yellow discharge flashed and sparked.
Photons released from that discharge scattered like brilliant dust, then descended like snowflakes to form a Hexagon Magic Circle.
The Demon Beast’s body sank into the depths of the Hexagon Magic Circle.
Then a second Hexagon Magic Circle overlapped the first, shielding the entire Aircraft that carried the Demon Beast.
All of this unfolded in a single, fractured instant.
Strangely, Han Eol did not miss a single moment—he witnessed everything.
The Demon Beast’s three eyes widening, its tails turning to aim at him, the summoning of clouds and discharge—each scene unfurled sequentially in Han Eol’s mind, stored in perfect order.
And then he saw how the photons released from the discharge formed two layers of the Hexagon Magic Circle, sheltering both the Demon Beast and the Aircraft.
‘The moment this instant ends, I die.’
Within time that had slowed to a crawl, Han Eol was seized by a sudden premonition.
‘If I’m going to live, I have to tear out that bastard’s soul before this moment ends. Come on.’
Han Eol poured every ounce of strength into curling his fingers.
As his actual hands formed hook-like shapes and clenched with all his might, his Rainbow-Colored Hand in the Mindscape bent each joint to the limit of its strength.
Ignoring the spikes that bristled from the Demon Beast’s soul, he wrenched down with everything he had.
“ζ!”
On the verge of death, the Demon Beast released a single, ghastly shriek.
At that same instant, it unleashed all eight barbs in every direction.
Originally, all eight had been aimed squarely at Han Eol.
But the agony of having its soul torn loose threw off its aim—the barbs went wildly astray.
Still, one of them grazed dangerously close to Han Eol’s left ear as it passed.
Han Eol did not even feel his earlobe tear away.
As the Demon Beast’s eight-pronged attack scattered into nothing, its soul finally tore free.
It was a Demon Beast leagues beyond Seolrang, transcendent in its power—and yet it died absurdly, claimed by Han Eol’s grotesque Supernatural Ability.
Had this creature attacked him from a distance, Han Eol would never have made so much as a token resistance before being slaughtered outright.
But the Demon Beast had wanted to drag Han Eol toward death through suffering and terror, and in so doing had brought ruin upon itself.
Nor did it die cleanly.
As the Rainbow-Colored Hand tore the soul away by brute force, two tails connected to that soul ripped free along with it in grotesque fashion.
In reality, two of the eight tails—peculiarly sickly, tan-colored ones—pierced straight through the Demon Beast’s pelvis and were dragged through the gaps between its organs, then shattered through its ribs and throat before punching through the roof of its mouth, erupting outward with a bulging, obscene violence.
The pressure was too much for the creature’s three eyeballs to withstand; they burst.
The soulless Demon Beast toppled hideously.
The dead creature plummeted from the Aircraft.
Han Eol, caught in its death grip, fell with it.
‘No. No, no, no.’
Han Eol’s inner scream tore loose.
He was no Physical-type Supernatural Ability user blessed with an iron body.
He had no magic to lighten his own frame.
He had no wings, of course.
There was no chance of surviving a fall from this impossible height where clouds were born.
The situation just before had been so desperate that Han Eol had simply attacked the creature’s soul without hesitation—and this was the price: death by impact. Wasn’t that just too cruel?
Chapter 4
A deafening roar tore through the sky.
As Han Eol plummeted at tremendous speed, the wind rising from the earth hammered against his entire body.
His skin burned.
It felt as though rough stone were scrubbing his flesh raw, peeling it away in sheets.
No—never mind the skin; his heart felt as though it would stop.
Han Eol thrashed desperately for life, clawing at survival. First, he swept his Rainbow-Colored Hand through the air, trying by any means to catch his own plummeting body.
But it was useless.
The Rainbow-Colored Hand passed through his physical body without resistance, as though it were nothing.
‘No. No, I—’
Han Eol barely held his crumbling mind together and curled his body into as tight a ball as he could manage, wrapping both hands around his head.
Han Eol had no choice but to trust the Vest’s defensive capabilities. In that position, he held a Grade A Recovery Potion bottle between his teeth and worked his teeth and tongue to twist off the cap.
The potion’s fragrance flooded his mouth.
‘Not yet. Don’t swallow yet. Not yet, not yet—argh!’
Han Eol sharpened every sense in his body, gauging the precise moment of impact with the ground.
The instant his bones shattered and flesh crushed against the hard earth, he had to swallow the recovery potion down his throat.
Only then would there be any chance—however slim—that he might survive.
That moment came swiftly.
Scorching pain, as if thunder and lightning were striking in clusters, consumed him. A tremendous sound tore through his eardrums. The moment his body slammed into the ground, both his legs shattered first.
Fortunately, his spine didn’t fracture.
Thanks partly to the Grade A Vest’s exceptional defensive strength, and partly because his Backpack provided some cushioning effect.
His skull remained intact.
Just before the violent impact could reach the back of his head, he had miraculously curled his neck and tucked his head as far as possible into the Vest.
Yet the damage Han Eol sustained was severe.
Due to the shockwave penetrating the Grade A Vest, most of his ribs snapped. His head snapped upward violently as his neck twisted with a sickening crack. A severe Concussion washed over him.
As a result, his left eye was jolted from its socket.
‘Ugh—’
While swallowing the Grade A Recovery Potion held in his mouth, Han Eol somehow managed to seize the dislodged eye and force it back into its socket.
Fortunately, the Grade A Recovery Potion’s effects activated quickly.
Ruptured organs knitted together rapidly.
His shattered bones found their places again.
The Concussion symptoms improved.
The optical nerves of his displaced eye reconnected.
Even the torn earlobes partially regenerated.
But the impact of the fall from such a tremendous height had been too severe. Despite swallowing the recovery potion at precisely the right moment, Han Eol’s consciousness grew hazy and dim.
“Nngh—”
Han Eol writhed under the unbearable pain.
Even so, he divided part of his consciousness toward the Rainbow-Colored Hand. A remarkable transformation was unfolding within the hand in his Mindscape.
So far, Han Eol had faced a total of eight Demon Beasts.
Among these, the souls of six Seolrang were absorbed entirely by the Rainbow-Colored Hand the moment they separated from their bodies.
The soul of the Demon Beast that rode the disk was torn free and followed the same path as the Seolrang.
Even after absorbing seven souls this way, the Rainbow-Colored Hand showed no change whatsoever.
But today, something extraordinary finally happened.
A moment before, when Han Eol forcibly seized and tore the soul of the Sammok Palmi Demon Beast with the Rainbow-Colored Hand, the soul was inevitably pulled into the palm as always.
Yet from that very moment, phenomena unlike anything before began to occur.
The soul of the Sammok Palmi Demon Beast began to split apart.
A Demon Beast’s soul was composed of three components: the ethereal essence, the consciousness, and the corporeal imprint.
The ethereal essence and consciousness, like those of the other Demon Beasts before, rose upward and were absorbed as part of the Rainbow-Colored Hand.
As this happened, the Rainbow-Colored Hand grew slightly larger.
So far, there was nothing different from before.
But the corporeal imprint of the Sammok Palmi Demon Beast triggered a strange phenomenon.
Like sediment sinking in liquid, the imprint sank downward. If the consciousness was like clear liquid, the imprint resembled turbid sediment.
Therefore, the clear consciousness merged with the essence and was pulled into the Rainbow-Colored Hand, but the sediment clumped together and sank downward, eventually protruding from the palm of the Rainbow-Colored Hand like a pimple and hardened.
Over time, the protruding corporeal imprint of the Sammok Palmi transformed into something resembling an eyeball.
This was no mere resemblance—its behavior was indistinguishable from that of an actual eye.
Glance. Glance.
A small, bulging eyeball on the palm of the Rainbow-Colored Hand surveyed its surroundings, darting this way and that.
Like a newborn puppy just opening its eyes, rolling them with curiosity in all directions, the corporeal imprint of the Sammok Palmi observed its surroundings with a subtly gleaming gaze.
It was the natural order that a living being built will through consciousness and accumulated knowledge through the corporeal imprint.
Thus, when a living being died, its thoughts and philosophy would ascend to heaven with consciousness, while knowledge and experience remained on earth, retained by the corporeal imprint.
Such was the case here.
The eyeball that sprouted on the Rainbow-Colored Hand had lost all the will and philosophy the Sammok Palmi Demon Beast possessed in life, yet it retained most of the knowledge.
In a sense, this was nothing different from filtering only the Sammok Palmi’s knowledge and compacting it into the form of an eyeball.
The eyeball merely lacked the will to utilize that knowledge, and it was unaware that it had once been the master of that very knowledge.
Chapter 5
Time passed slowly.
A yellow dust storm descended upon the Wasteland, covering Han Eol’s body in dirt and grit.
Because of the fall from the great height, much of his body lay buried in the earth.
As the dust settled over him, all trace of Han Eol vanished.
The same was true of the Sammok Palmi Demon Beast’s corpse.
Being heavier than Han Eol, the Sammok Palmi sank deeper into the earth after the fall.
Once the yellow dust settled over it, no trace of the Demon Beast remained visible from the ground.
There was, however, one thing.
The Aircraft that Sammok Palmi had been riding descended through the sandstorm and landed gently beside its master—the corpse of the Demon Beast itself.
The Aircraft seemed unaware of its master’s death.
Even in the violent yellow dust, the Aircraft’s loyalty in silently keeping vigil at its master’s side was almost endearing.
It was at that very moment an anomaly occurred.
Click, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
Dozens of Mana Stones in the lower section of the Aircraft flickered on and off, displaying erratic behavior.
Meanwhile, the Rainbow-Colored Hand—though in truth only Han Eol could perceive its form and color; to the eyes of others it was neither visible nor tangible—was gently covering the fallen Han Eol to shield him from the dust.
Yet since this hand had no physical substance, it could not prevent sand from seeping in and accumulating thickly over Han Eol’s body.
At such a moment, the hand within the Mindscape seemed to offer little help.
But then a small eyeball that had sprouted on the hand looked about cautiously and spotted the Demon Beast’s Aircraft.
The eyeball had no ego.
All memories had vanished.
Therefore, the eyeball did not know what that Aircraft was.
Yet the knowledge of Sammok Palmi embedded in the eyeball surged forth instinctively, attempting to establish contact with the Aircraft.
In life, Sammok Palmi had controlled the Aircraft through brainwaves.
Though the eyeball possessed no brain, it did possess knowledge, and thus could mimic a signal with the exact wavelength as the brainwaves of its living days.
The Puppeteer Who Harvests Souls
Author |
Junon
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Editor in Chief |
Editorial Department
Published by |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books
Address |
7F Kwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
UCI |
G720:N+A063-20260703071
Blog |
blog.naver.com/dreambookss
Twitter (X) |
@dreambookss
Submissions |
[email protected]
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without the written permission of Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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